Spring hunting: 20 CABS guards return for ‘Operation Skyfall’

The Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) will send 20 bird guards to Malta and Gozo for this year's spring hunting season for a 'bird protection camp' that will run from 19 to 30 April.

As in previous years, roost areas of protected birds of prey, storks and herons will be monitored around the clock in order to protect them from poachers, CABS said in a statement.

The so called 'bird guards' will be monitoring trapping sites and to report and bird trapping activity to the environmental police Administrative Law Enforcement unit. This year CABS operations will concentrate on the poaching hotspots identified during previous camps including the area of the international airport, the Delimara peninsula and Gozo.

CABS said the costs of the camp, dubbed Operation Skyfall, will amount to €18,000 which has been covered by private donations and a grant from the German Foundation Pro Biodiversity.

CABS also said it had written last week to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat saying it would employ every legal means to put an end to spring hunting on Malta.

"The organisation has already received firm support for their efforts in this direction from the the German Minister for the Environment, Peter Altmaier (CDU). He confirmed in a reply to CABS that the killing of migrant bird species with unfavourable conservation status totally negates the efforts to preserve these species in Germany," CABS said.

Altmaier referred the matter in March this year in a communication to the European Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik, asking him to check whether member states were acting in contravention of the EU Birds Directive, which bans Spring hunting.

"In addition to France and Italy, which are being criticised for their active or tacit tolerance of hunting of endangered wader and song bird species, Malta could also once again come under close scrutiny by the Commission for permitting hunting of Turtle Dove and Quail, above all during pre-nuptial migration," CABS said.

CABS also claimed that Turtle Dove was a highly endangered species in Europe, citing data from the Federation of German Avifaunists (Dachverband Deutscher Avifaunisten - DDA) o fa 67% decline in bird population since 1990.

"The FKNK and the Maltese government have always justified spring hunting on the grounds that the Turtle Dove is a common species and that hunting has no negative effect on populations.

"The very opposite is true in this case. Because of the current sharp decline in central Europe, the species cannot be hunted sustainably anywhere on the continent," CABS President Heinz Schwarze said.